Thursday, July 10, 2014

Toronto, Canada (Airport; July 4, 2014)

Oh Boy, I made it to the Toronto airport. Apparently, even though this is Canada, not the US, you go through US customs in Canada. So, I only had an hour and thirty minutes until my plane left Toronto for San Francisco and I had to go through customs. Arriving, I had the super unpleasant surprise of the strangest customs I have ever seen. You were supposed to scan your boarding pass at a station, then wait for your name to appear on the board. First of all, I had to go to a separate counter instead of just scanning my pass. It appeared that my luggage had not come off the airplane yet, but the lady told me not to worry and just wait until my name came up on the board. Then, I waited a very long time, and my plane had started to board, I asked a lady what I was supposed to do, as I didn't want to miss my plane. She took me to a baggage something-or-other, and it turned out my bags were missing, which is why my name had not come on the board. So that was just great. My bags were missing, and I was in danger of missing my flight. I got rushed to the front of the customs line, and actually going through customs was easy and did not take up any time. So, I thought I would be fine. But, noooo. There was a security line afterwards. A SECURITY line!!! Why on earth would there be a security line right after customs?? We just came off a stupid airplane. My only thought is that some people had not gone through a security line yet. So, anyway, the line there was huge, and even if your plane left in less than fifteen minutes you couldn't go through quickly. Which, honestly, fair enough. Then, as it turned out, I was chosen for the extra security check. Which was just great. At this point I resigned myself to missing my flight. But, not having missing one before, I did not want that to happen. So I got all patted down and got all my bags checked, etc. Then I rushed to the gate, not even tying my shoes. But it was to no avail. I missed the plane by 2 minutes. It was still in the spot, but the boarding thingy had ben taken off, so there was no way to get one the plane. I started to cry at this point, it was just too much. But the lady and guy were super nice. They told me that there was another flight to San Francisco 2 hours later, and they could book me on that flight. So they did, but it turned out the Redding flight left the same time as my flight arrived and that one was the last one out. The next one was at 12 the next day. However, they could not take care of that for me, they could do it once I reached San Francisco. So I went to that gate, called my parents, and promptly burst into tears. :| In my defense, the amount of sleep I had gotten was minuscule over the past 30 hours. So after I let everyone know what happened, I was able to wait for the plane. We left the airport right on time, so I settled in for the flight, and hoped everything would work out just fine.